1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to thermal management of electronic devices, and more particularly to graphics processors with increased thermal management granularity.
2. Background
Electronic devices are ubiquitous in society and can be found in everything from wristwatches to computers. The complexity and sophistication of these electronic devices usually increases with each generation, and as a result, newer electronic devices often consume a greater amount of power than their predecessors. As the power consumption increases, the circuitry within the electronic device may generate increasing levels of heat, which may be detrimental to the operation of the circuitry.
To exacerbate this problem, the trend in conventional electronic devices is to make each generation smaller. As a result, the temperature per unit volume coming from successive generations of electronic devices may rise to levels that are potentially hazardous to the user or the device itself. For this reason, microprocessors and other circuitry may be equipped with a heat sink and/or a fan to transfer heat away from the die and keep the microprocessor within safe operational ranges. Additional thermal management techniques also may be implemented such as selectively shutting down especially power-consumptive elements of an electronic device.
In addition to having increased power consumption, many conventional electronic devices also have greater graphics abilities than their predecessors. This is especially true of personal computers where users may employ multiple monitors per computer, each of which may be capable of rendering complex computer graphic images. Unfortunately, many conventional computers' thermal management techniques may offer a limited amount of control over the power consumption state of the computer's graphics sub-system. For example, techniques to control the power consumption of a graphics controller may include only a handful of power consumption states, each with varying frequency and voltage levels for the graphics controller. Often the difference in the graphics controller's performance in each of these power states may be too large to be useful. Further, implementing conventional power states may cause distortion to the images being painted by the computer's graphics sub-system.
Accordingly, there is a need for providing thermal management to graphics controllers that may allow improved granularity between power states.